By the 1860s, as Davenport writes, “many of the city’s boardinghouses, hotels and businesses sat on dozens of unstable city blocks atop ‘fill’ or ‘made’ land,” as did the water systems meant to protect them from fire. “It was inevitable,” Davenport says, that “another ‘big’ one would strike the Bay.”On April 18, 1906, at around 5:12 a.m., it happened. An earthquake later estimated at 8.3 on the Richter scale convulsed the region, its epicenter some two miles out to sea. When it made landfall, as one resident claimed, it “was like the waves of the ocean”: The ground leaped and buckled; bedroom walls fell on sleeping occupants; facades fell off their frames and into the street. The worst was yet to come, however, as four days of fire ravaged the city, scorching a combined 500 blocks and leaving a quarter-million homeless.

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Persons: Davenport, ” Davenport, “, Robert Altman, Jack London, Enrico Caruso — Locations: ”